Gmail makes an income for the Google mothership by putting contextual ads alongside your messages - eh, nothing new with that. But it turns out Gmail has a built-in conscience, and that conscience (like most) can be used against it! Joe McKay figured out that by adding a few words to any message, all ads would disappear - specifically, words that would suggest tragedy. Iterating one more step by integrating the necessary words into a self-explanatory sentence, Lifehacker suggests the following ad-killing signature: "I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath." Nice. Of course, Gmail and Google are nothing if not smart, so it's only a matter of time before their algorithms compensate for this trick. But in the meantime, we humans can enjoy a brief lead in the advertising arms race!
Remove Gmail Ads with "Decency Filter"
Gmail makes an income for the Google mothership by putting contextual ads alongside your messages - eh, nothing new with that. But it turns out Gmail has a built-in conscience, and that conscience (like most) can be used against it! Joe McKay figured out that by adding a few words to any message, all ads would disappear - specifically, words that would suggest tragedy. Iterating one more step by integrating the necessary words into a self-explanatory sentence, Lifehacker suggests the following ad-killing signature: "I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath." Nice. Of course, Gmail and Google are nothing if not smart, so it's only a matter of time before their algorithms compensate for this trick. But in the meantime, we humans can enjoy a brief lead in the advertising arms race!
I find it very interesting that Gmail has such a fail-safe. I guess that signature is better that the example I had seen earlier, "rape 9/11 suicide," which most would find more objectionable than the ads.
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